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Professors win college´s highest faculty awards

Dean of the Faculty Roger Brooks (far left) and President Leo I. Higdon Jr. (far right) stand with the 2008 faculty award winners, (from left to right) professors Bridget Baird, Hisae Kobayashi and Jefferson Singer

June 30, 2008

Connecticut College Professors Jefferson Singer, Hisae Kobayashi and Bridget Baird have been honored with the college´s most prestigious faculty awards. Kobayashi, senior lecturer in East Asian languages and cultures, received the John S. King Memorial Teaching Award, established to recognize teacher-scholars with high standards of teaching excellence and concern for students.

Kobayashi, who specializes in Japanese, focuses on helping her students learn to communicate effectively with native speakers in a socially and culturally appropriate manner. She has served as the Japanese language program coordinator and adviser to the college´s Toor Cummings Center for International Studies and the Liberal Arts and served a three-year term on the college´s Study Away Committee.

Singer, professor of psychology, was awarded the Nancy Batson Nisbet Rash Faculty Research Award, presented annually to a faculty member for outstanding scholarly or artistic accomplishments. The award honors Rash, an art history professor at the College for 33 years.

Singer, who specializes in personality theory, addiction and clinical psychology, received a 2003 Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award to research self-defining memories in the United Kingdom. This past spring, a visiting fellowship allowed Singer to continue his collaborative work on autobiographical memory in the psychology department at the University of Leeds.

The Helen B. Regan Faculty Leadership Award was presented to Baird, professor of mathematics and computer science and the Judith Ammerman ´60 Director of the Ammerman Center for Arts & Technology. The award is presented annually to a tenured faculty member whose outstanding service in a leadership role exemplifies the College´s commitment to shared governance, democratic process and campus community development.

Baird specializes in virtual reality and has supervised numerous student research projects that cross the boundaries between computer science and the arts. Among the many topics she has explored, Baird has conducted research on artificial intelligence and music, as well as the visualization of mathematics.

For more information contact: Amy Martin (860) 439-2526; a.martin@conncoll.edu